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Super Mario 64 vs Castlevania: Symphony of the Night vs Chrono Trigger vs Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island 2009
Results Round Two Saturday, May 16th, 2009 Ulti's Analysis "Brother... it's been too long!" -Ocelot Contests just aren't the same without a solid Mario v Crono match or two. This was a beautiful, beautiful match. I love Chrono Trigger, but I love Mario 64 a tad bit more. Seeing Symphony of the Night become a bottom-feeder sucked, and it equally sucked seeing Yoshi's Island get SFFd to a 7% last place finish. But for once, a 7% last place finish was relevant. More on that in a second. Pre-contest, I swore up and down that this would be a tossup, and picked Chrono Trigger > Mario 64 solely because of Chrono Trigger's 2004 performance. Not only did it defeat Mario 3, but a 60-40 win over Mario World is no joke. I've always figured Mario 64 was around Mario world's level (best guess I can make given the OOT > Mario 64 SFF result), and that even a slightly weaker Chrono Trigger could beat Mario 64 heads-up especially given the recent DS Chrono Trigger release. Early on, it was clear Chrono Trigger was in trouble. Mario 64 kept the poll even for a solid 30 minutes before the CT night vote kicked in, and even then it took until 2 hours in for Chrono Trigger to get any momentum going. Once the night vote kicked in, Chrono Trigger built up a lead, but Mario 64 was still managing to score some prolonged stalls. CT managed to build up a lead of 650, but it felt like one of those really frail, "This could blow up in my face at any time" leads. And it was. The morning vote hit, and Mario 64 began dominating the poll. The lead was gone by 9:30, and then Mario started ballin' all over Crono's face. By the time this match ended, it was a close-match-turned-3200-vote-blowout. Crono's performance come the morning vote was embarrassing, but not at all unsurprising. I love CT and all, but this has become a very debilitating problem. Blowing big leads is supposed to be very rare in contests, but all things Chrono Trigger are turning it into a routine. 4000 vote swings are not supposed to be common, but CT is making us expect it. That's legitimately insane, and this result was one of those rare results that altered an entire contest midstream. Remember, CT > Mario 64 was the expected result, and we were supposed to see a hotly contested LTTP vs FF7/FF6/CT match with a possible LTTP > FF7 upset, and the following FF7/CT/Mario 1/Mario 3 match was supposed to be an aesthetic Mario vs Crono clash. And beyond this, remember all the pre-contest chatter about a potential CT/LTTP rematch getting ruined by the format? Of course you do. At this rate, there would be no CT/LTTP match at all. For round 3 to have a CT > Mario 64 result, CT would need a perfect storm of Goldeneye leeching the hell out of Mario 64 while Final Fantasy 7 barely affected CT at all. It was possible, but CT's years-long track record of choking paired with Mario's dominance this contest put the odds around 3% or so. It was bad. As for Yoshi's Island legitimately affecting this poll, one could claim an SNES relationship with Chrono Trigger and a Mario relationship with Mario 64. Rarely do you see a last place game do so badly, yet be so widely debated. If you weren't in the stats topic for the CT/Mario 64 round 3 debates, you missed everything that makes the stats topic the place to be in a contest. We have a legitimate reputation for being elitist and closed-minded, but we're still the best topic during contest season anyway. Match Trends Ngamer's Same Day Analysis Match Prediction Not sure if there will be anything too exciting to keep an eye on tonight. Really wish we could have seen Mario 64 vs Chrono Trigger in a fair fight; would have been an excellent chance to test M64 vs SMW and also to see how far CT has fallen relative to Mario in the past five years. Instead Yoshi's Island is there to mess everything up, and then next round gets even worse thanks to FF7 and GE showing up to have a major impact on both games (though how huge and in what direction we still have no clue). A few weeks back people were trying to inject some kind of interest into this one by suggesting that Castlevania could challenge Mario 64 thanks to the help YI would be providing, but come on now, let's not get silly. Yoshi's in a horrible position- bigger, more popular Mario on one side and bigger, more popular SNES game on the other. The game is going to get crunched to such a tiny percentage that I can't see it destroying 64 to that extent, especially not after its frankly awful showing in R1. SotN's still a decent game and ought to pull a respectable percentage, but I'm envisioning healthy gaps between all 4 entries here, to the point where no position will ever be in doubt. On the plus side... Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy, whoo! Was hoping we'd see that level last round, glad to see it pop up here. Also at first I thought the guy on the right in the SotN pic was Captain Falcon, so maybe it will overperform by 10% like in that Diddy Kong match. Final percentage: * Chrono Trigger - 41% * Super Mario 64 - 33% * Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - 17% * Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - 9% Okay, so I made that up in like 2 seconds when I realized it was 11:59 and I didn't have an Oracle pick in yet. BUT, it's pretty close to the 40/30/20/10 split I would have tried for if given more time to think, so I like it! Next Day Review Oh man, what an incredible run Mario has been on lately. The SMW result was nuts, yes, but I've got to think this showing from Mario 64 makes even LESS sense. I mean think about it... CT put up 70.30% directly on Yoshi's Island last time around. Sure SMW1 >> SMW2, but you'd have to figure CT could have pushed that toward 75 if not for drawing such terrible opponents (two other SNES RPGs, both with dedicated fanbases = yikes). But today the sore thumb turned around and was pointing back in CT's direction- no other RPGs, dual Mario options that would surely have users anti-voting the series (as they did FF the other day); in short the perfect storm for a great showing. But not only does it lose, Mario 64's currently scoring 51.84% on it directly! Combined the two Mario games are putting up 55.97% on CT- I guess it wouldn't be all that shocking given Mario/Crono '05 and how much everything CT might have fallen off since then, but boy does it ever look weird in the light of that R1 performance. Luckily for Chrono, Goldeneye is showing up to limit Mario's damage next round... although will FF7 crush CT so bad that it won't even matter? That result is completely up in the air after seeing this IMO- not even an outright GE advancement would shock me! External Links * Match Updates * Guru Match Predictions * Oracle Match Results • Previous Match • Next Match Category:2009 Spring Contest Matches Category: Contest Matches